Atikh Rashid

Pune MP Girish Bapat had written to District Collector Naval Kishore Ram on July 23, stating that Covid-19 was spreading fast in Mulshi tehsil and there was an urgent need to improve the local health infrastructure by adding temporary facilities with additional beds.

In March, the State Excise Department had allowed licence holders to pay the annual fee in three instalments – 25 per cent by June 30, 25 per cent by September 30 and the remaining 50 per cent by December 31, owing to business disruptions caused by the coronavirus outbreak.

The administration believes that continuation of the lockdown in its present form will not be required, although some restrictions will remain in place to avoid crowding, said Pune Collector Naval Kishore Ram.

Pune District Collector Naval Kishore Ram said the decision was in keeping with guidelines issued by Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) for treatment of asymptomatic patients, would improve bed availability at hospitals, and help alleviate fear of the disease among the public.

As per Pune Divisional Commissioner Deepak Mhaisekar, first five days of the lockdown will be stringent with exemption only for milk, medicine and operation of clinics and hospitals.

Various district administrations have imposed blanket curfews, at a time when cities and towns with much larger case counts are opening up. As reported by The Indian Express earlier, over a million migrants have returned to Marathwada between March and June.

Meanwhile, amid the pandemic, Maharashtra State Road Transport Corporation (MSRTC) will lose revenue of about Rs 1 crore it usually earns by operating special buses to Pandharpur from Pune and nearby areas.

The scheme for migrant workers' welfare, however, leaves inter-district migrants completely out of its purview, focusing only on 116 districts across six states which see high inter-state migration.

According to the Prime Minister’s Office, the districts chosen for Garib Kalyan Rozgar Abhiyan (GKRA) are those where more than 25,000 migrant workers have returned in the last few months.

However, as per department officials in Pune Circle, the office has not received any funds to go ahead with the planned plantation drive although nurseries are filled with saplings.

Telephone companies were among the most prominent advertisers in film magazines of the late 1930s and 1940s. These ads had stars and starlets of the Hindi film industry seductively holding the receiver to their ears.

Indian Civil Service officer Charles Walter Rand felt the need for strong measures to "stamp out plague from Poona" and deployed the military to search infected persons. Soon, reports and rumours of harassment of locals - especially of Indian women - at the hands of British soldiers started emerging from the city.

While the project employed over 4500 workers at its numerous sites, now only 1040 workers have stayed back; contractors are desperately trying to rope in fresh lots of labourers from north India. But will they come, and when?

While 1,548 of the migrant workers were accommodated in the train, which left for West Bengal on Saturday afternoon, there was no space for the remaining 400 workers. Nearly 200 others, desperate to go back to Bengal, had reached the station on their own.

A number of migrant workers apparently took other means of transport such as buses, trucks, bikes or bicycles, and in some cases, walked all the way home. Authorities, however, are reluctant to concede that migrants used unauthorised means of transport in their desperation to reach home.

Discords and quarrels over the quarantine of migrants have become commonplace in villages, with old caste-linked or political animosities resurfacing

According to officials, almost every district in Marathwada or Vidarbha has received about 80,000 to 1 lakh migrants returning from Pune, Mumbai, Aurangabad, Nashik and Nagpur.

On Sunday, flocks of migrants desperate to return to their home states from Pune had considerably thinned at the 'exit points' of national highways.

However, stray groups of workers keen to go to Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Chhattisgarh and Madhya Pradesh could be seen on Pune-Ahmednagar Road.

1.12 lakh registered for inter-state transport, only 16,064 sent via trains so far

Although fares are three to four times higher than usual, it has not deterred migrants who are queuing up to secure a seat after undergoing primary screening by a doctor present at the spot, who checks the temperature and issues a medical certificate.

They will be housed at four different city hospitals for 14 days.

'Don't want to encourage walking to home states, but we need a humane approach to the issue,' says Collector Naval Kishore Ram.

While state agencies have set their focus on transportation of inter-state migrants stuck in cities like Pune and Mumbai, very little is being done for internal migrants who came to big cities from poorer districts in Marathwada and Vidarbha.